The ministry has created a live dashboard, housed in the National Urban Observatory in Nirman Bhawan. This would help keep track of live updates from the smart cities’ progress.

NEW DELHI: The Centre has got into a mission rethink mode to speed up the implementation of projects under the Smart City Mission.

In the fifth and final year of ‘Smart City Mission’, the Centre has set a new target –– Mission Rs 2 lakh crore. With the current trajectory of project tendering and completion, the government would have awarded contracts till 2022. However, in the last mile, the ministry of housing and urban affairs has decided to issue tenders for all projects under the mission over the next six months, that is till March 2020. The projects would be worth Rs 2 lakh crore.

As the mission would complete five years on June 25, 2020, the Centre has set another target for its fifth anniversary celebrations –– to award all works and begin work on projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore on the ground.

The Rs 2 -lakh-crore target would involve completely turning around the mission. According to sources, the first target of the ministry is the first batch of 20 cities selected through a competitive process in January 2016.

A senior official said, “This batch has got the maximum time under the mission –– about 3.6 years. Now, we are keeping a close track of how these cities are faring.”

The ministry has created a live dashboard, housed in the National Urban Observatory in Nirman Bhawan. This would help keep track of live updates from the smart cities’ progress. The ministry has alo decided to hold regional conferences to involve startups and use their innovation.